ST Why don’t these movies “FEEL” like Star Wars?

I know. It worries me. I enjoyed TFA, but felt like it was a pointless waste of a film slot. Akin to utilising our last reserves of food or ammunition pointlessly. I was looking forward to TLJ to correct this, but ay caramba. My expectations are also low which is sad. I literally was thrilled growing up and putting in every Star Wars VHS to see the next one. And with the PT, going to see each one in the cinema. It was George Lucas' magic in all 6 films.

This time round, I enjoy, but feel empty upon leaving. And I don't feel that same excitement to go immediately. So sad. I enjoyed Rogue One, but the main saga has me perplexed. Exactly no world building, no logical tying in of a super weapon to the plot. No Emperor like speeches, Jedi honour etc.

It's a shame. I would have loved to have seen a Last Samurai style scene (where the son covers their retreat from the capital) for Solo, or Luke, injured, face off against an entire army, before succumbing to blaster fire by only sheer force of numbers.

Yes it's just I felt some of the Expanded Universe stuff was a bit off. I just wish we had Lucas' stories to watch on the screen. In some parallel universe (hey maybe JJ will create it), I know that somewhere Star Wars fans are watching his version of the sequels and they're the best films ever made given he has 2017 technology too.

 

So, I see this an awful lot and am still having trouble with it. Let's look at it from two scenarios:

Scenario 1: You are entering the Star Wars franchise through ANH. You know there is a big bad Empire, and a Rebellion trying to stop it. We know the state of Galactic Affairs. There isn't a need to know any more than that, because at this point the movies and story exist in a vacuum for all you know. Over 3 movies, we first hear of the Emperor, then see that he is Vader's "master," then finally see him leading the Empire.

Scenario 2: You started prior to ANH, probably TPM, and saw the Prequels. In the 19 year gap between ROTS and ANH, things have neither completely changed, nor have they been reset. They've been built upon. The Empire - which we saw formed - is in it's prime and has just constructed a Death Star. The Jedi are gone, after the events we saw in ROTS, and all that remains is Obi-Wan (and Yoda), after we found out in ROTS. This is the story of Luke, who we saw at the end of ROTS. Luke is still on the same planet, and has grown into a young man while watched over by Obi-Wan. Everything is the logical culmination of what happened at the end of the Prequel Trilogy. You absolutely DO NOT need to read or watch anything in between. Not even supplementary information, visual guides, or DVD commentaries or whatever.

Now, if TFA is your first entry point into the Star Wars saga, then there is no issue with exposition in the ST. You have everything you need, though you may be a bit confused when you go back and watch the other ones as to how they are connected. But here's where the issue comes in:

TFA is Episode VII of a (as of now) 9-part Saga. I'd estimate that the vast majority of the people watching the ST - and certainly all of the fans - are in a similar situation as Scenario 2. That means they have seen I - VI and understand the story. But, in contrast to the 19-year gap between ROTS and ANH, the galaxy we see doesn't logically fit with the information we get in the films. There is a new FO that looks like the Empire but everything is bigger. There is an ultra-powerful dark side user named Snoke who does not carry over in any way from the prior episodes (oh and he just died). There apparently is a Republic - but it is promptly destroyed before anything is explained about it, except for a few throwaway lines about "allies." And there is a Resistance, but this movement is not the same as the Alliance from the OT, and the lack of explanation about the Republic connection doesn't tell us anything about why they are even necessary in the political state of things. All of these things are left to supplementary material to explain. And, on top of that, many of us feel like the OT was rather pointless, since things have since been reset and the stakes overcome in the OT have proved meaningless thus far.

Also, I apologize if I'm one of the new posters you are referring to.

 

Honestly THIS THIS THIS!! None are so blind as those who refuse to see this.

Scenario 2 applies here exactly.

This is Episode VII of a 9 part Saga. And it doesn't logically or in spirit fit into that saga. No flow or connection with Snoke being just somebody random. No galactic affairs, beautifully explained in the OT, and brilliantly shown in a thriller in the PT. No follow on story.

This is a golden post and should be preserved for all time. Well said!

 

That would come down to the individual. TFA feels so much like Star Wars to me. TLJ much less so, but that was what Johnson was trying to do. I still enjoyed the movie.

 

Scenario 1 I would think is actually the vast majority of Star Wars fans worldwide. There's definitely a generation of young fans who grew up with the prequels and love them as a result but there's almost certainly a larger group of people in their twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties who grew up with the OT and then saw the prequels more like EU content brought to life after the fact. The OT worked for decades without the prequels. The Prequels wouldn't have worked so well if the OT never existed and I-III were all there ever was. The OT is the main draw and its popularity is proof that all that background detail in the prequels that would have normally just been in the EU is for the hard core fans to enjoy and to help enrich the OT experience.

I don't think many expected the ST to be able to provide 3.5 movies worth (including RO) of exposition. They see the OT as the standard of excellence for the masses and are aiming to give that kind of experience to fans new and old by expecting that they'll function getting the same amount of backstory as the masses did in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s when people still loved the OT without all of the background info provided by the prequels.

Yes, they're episodes in the saga and, sure, George would like everyone to enjoy them that way in order but I've yet to hear anyone not on a Star Wars site ever suggest that to an adult who's never seen Star Wars before. The closest I've seen of that came recently where a coworker recommended to another to start at RO while in theatres and then letting that guide them into the OT. The person even asked, "Should I bother with I-III? Everyone tells me I shouldn't" and the other person said, "I wouldn't. Those are for the super hard core fans who like read the books and everything. They're not really Star Wars." I was taken aback but it dawned on me that's probably how a lot of older people do view them.

The ST seems purposely designed to address PT criticism and win many of those people back and in some ways has stolen the entire point of the PT (Anakin on his slide) and re-purposed it in his grandson with better acting and several story beats (with new twists) from the timeless OT classics. I expect even less people in the future will go back to the PT unfortunately and I have a feeling many PT fans sense that too. It helps explain why so many of the people who rank TPM and AOTC as their favorite films seem to hate the new ones so much for the critical acclaim they're getting.

The ST has enough elements going for it that new fans and new kids and new teens will be able to watch it and only it and fall in love with Star Wars and then go back and watch the OT and prequels almost like a younger, newer fan of Christopher Nolan's Batman going back to Tim Burton's later and liking it... but enjoying their newer version that they grew up with more and feeling like the older versions touch on some of the same things they liked but in ways that now feel dated. That's how the critics are essentially assessing these films. How do they work as 3 films on their own? And that's where they shine because they've learned from the best and borrowed little aspects of the EU, the PT and the OT along with new ideas to create sort of the ultimate Star Wars saga for new people who aren't familiar with any of the past at all. Or who just know the names and that's it.

There's a reason Hollywood keeps doing soft reboots on all of this old content. Younger audiences, on a larger scale, don't seem to care to go back an watch old films. There are so many new blockbusters coming out for them all the time with cutting edge effects and actors and actresses that seem current to them that on a large scale Hollywood knows it's going to have to keep soft rebooting old properties to keep connecting with new generations. There will be new Spidermans, Batmans, Bonds, Avengers (in time), Jurrasic stories, Planet of the Apes stories, Lion Kings, Alladin's, Jungle Books, Beauty and the Beasts, etc and probably even new Harry Potters and new LOTR within the next 10-20 years. New Matrix movies will probably happen. It won't stop and the soft reboot approach is Hollywood's way of giving old fans a slightly new take on what they know and love, while simultaneously exposing brand new generations of kids to classic story beats and worlds they wouldn't care to revisit on a large scale in the theatre again unless it was new.

 

None of that really addresses my argument in terms of storytelling, but you did hit the nail on the head as to what's going on:

This is a reboot made by mostly different people and contributes to why a lot of us don't feel like it's the same story as the six (or three) movies we grew up with. Take out Mark, Carrie, and Harrison, and it becomes even more obvious.

I'm really glad you are fully enjoying it and I will enjoy it to the extent that I can as well, like the Kylo/Rey/Luke bits. For everything else, I just gotta accept this is the way Star Wars is now.

 

The PT had its faults but there were bits that I felt I could continue to watch and enjoy for years afterward, the Opening space battle of Coruscant coupled with John Williams' music still has me jumping in my seat!!!....But because some so-called 'fans' had problems with the fact that it wasn't 'authentic' and had 'too much' CGI, we've been reduced to the ST.

A 'safe' route. Rebels vs. Tyranny. Feeling they're giving a good mix of CGI and Practical effects, but I feel they aren't. Ahch-To, D'Qar, Takodona, even Jakku (when they didn't rely on the poorly scaled CGI wreckages of OT ships), I feel I could find some place relatively like each of those if I looked hard enough, and I do not WISH to; Even Canto Bight. Nearly all the ST feels comparatively tame and toned down; I felt TFA was good as a starting point but with Ep. VIII, they're really shoving the nostalgia down our throats.

And also, no more CGI aliens either. Or even more OT aliens who aren't part of the Resistane. Sure, the galaxy is a big place but apparently not so big that those horse-faced aliens apparently occupy Jakku, the Resistance and Canto Bight...?

The fantastical sights of it all was part of what drew me in and with the technology of today, I feel they have the potential to make this out-of-world franchise even more so, but they're too worried about people apparently decrying it as too CGI-ish. They didn't even use Yoda's CGI form, for goodness' sake.

It's a free country, you are free to accept this, but I have come to realize that life is too short to let other people twist one of the few things I find enjoyable anymore into something I find myself partially dreading. I refuse.

 

Regardless of thoughts on CGI, using puppet Yoda makes story-sense. The puppet is the form that interacted with Luke in the previous movies. It is how Yoda appeared at the end of his life and how his Force ghost previously manifested itself. Watching the films in order, I think it would be odd for ROTS CGI Yoda to appear to Luke.

 

I suppose, but Ewan McGregor was brought back for TFA and Hayden was used for Anakin's manifestation.

The puppet looked awkward in this day and age. I realize they'd have to make a new puppet, I just feel that the Yoda in TLJ is definitely not the same from the OT but they're trying too hard to capture the feeling of the past when they should be moving FORWARD.

Maybe it wouldn't have made sense but at least this current generation could still attribute that to the current level of technology if nothing else. If Lucasfilm really wants to leave its mark with the current generation and not keep constantly making drawbacks they have to use their current tools, and that includes CGI. I've said it before and I will keep saying it, our resources are already depleting enough without blowing them on a movie not everyone will watch or even enjoy.

 

While this is true right here and now now, I feel like this will be the prevailing criticism when we're removed from the times and can lay the Saga out in 9 episodes. There's really no flow overall after ROTJ.

They now have to use flashbacks to explain things, which is something Lucas ran away from because they were kind of a storytelling crutch.

 

Plus there wasn't a guarantee they'd be able to match the flashbacks either with another trilogy.

A good example would be Bilbo from LOTR and the Hobbit

 

In TFA, they used the voices of Alec and Ewan together. With the exception of the first shot from the front, I thought the puppet looked incredible. It was classic Yoda. My personal preference is for puppet Yoda.

I disagree that the use of flashbacks is a crutch. Non-linear story telling has its place. There are plenty of examples where flashbacks are used to deepen the characters (Lost, for example). In TLJ, they were used sparingly and to good effect.

 

'Rey. These are your first steps.'

 

Yes. It is well-documented that the word "Rey" was taken from Alec Guinness.

 

Huh, really? I thought Alec said 'the Force will be with you.' Props to Ewan for sounding so similar; that, and my hearing's pretty bad. Sorry.

 

Leaving TLJ, i felt completely empty : as if i just ordered a piece of meat, and got sefved a vegan steak instead : looks similar on the outside, but it's missing the core ingredients. After putting my thougghts in order, i think i can pinpoint the most problematic points :

1 ) A problem of scale :
The conflict has never felt so small, the stakes have never been so low : all TLJ gave us is one cruiser chased by a bigger ship in the middle of nowhere (and the FO doesn't even have some extra-ships to surround it...)
That's your war of galactic proporions ? Where is the "epic" ? Where is the "grandeur" ?

Worse ! The rest of the galaxy doesn't even seem to care about the winner, and continue living theirr lives as if nothing happened !
This movie simply fails at representing the size of the First Order, and the magnitude of its threat. It also totally forgot to make us visit planets actually affected by the conflict : how are we supposed get a sense of the bigger picture without that ?

Spoiler

And you don't even need to dwelve into politics : instead of Canto Bight, just make us visit a "middleclass" planet where people don't know what's going on. As a results, riots and panic mouvements ensue.

This, at least, would make the conflict "feel" bigger, and have actual repercussions.

2 ) A problem of style :
Star Was is not Science-fiction, and never has been : it's a Space Opera (you could even say "Fantasy in space").
In the GFFA. Space itself is never empty : there is a planet every 10 miles ! And in-between, it's still a colourful place, full of asteroid fields, weird nebulae, and other peculiar space formations. Even life flourish out there, with incredible creatures like Space whales and Exo-gorgoths.

So why on earth does TLJ gave us the boring, cold, dark and empty Space instead ? Where is the extroardinary ? Where is the fantasy ? Where is the imagination ?

Damn, even the problems our protagonisst face have become boringly common ! Since when has parking infraction become an exciting development in Star Wars ?

3 ) A problem of theme and morality :
SW has always been a kid's story, a fairy tale, with a simple "morale scale". Here, bad guys betray each other because they are evil, while good guys play nice with each other because they are the good guys. It's as simple as that !

Sure, it's okay to blur the lines a bit, but unjutified mutiny, and heroes attacking and shooting at each other, is waaay out of bound. Before TLJ, the only time a protagonist attacked another one, it was Anakin against Windu : that was he very reason he turned to the dark side !
TLJ simply does not match the usual "scale of morality" of SW Saga films.
(nb : it's okay to explore those darker themes in an Anthology movie : they are meant to give us a different POV. But it is completely out of place here)

4 ) Lack of great character interactions :
Who can forget the great interactions between the OT trio, their great "back & forth" or the satisfaction you felt when they saved one another and teamed up to face great perils. Those moments are the flesh of Star Wars : they are what brought the fun, the heart and the energy of our beloved franchise.

And TFA perfectly recreated that aspect, with some great moments between Finn & Poe and Rey & Finn ... So naturally, Rian decided to completely separate our new trio, just to make sure those moments would never happen in his movie...

Spoiler: sarcasm

Although, judging how he wrote the Finn & Rose stuff, he would have probably screwed that up. had he tried.

 

I love it when another can put into words what I feel and yet can't rightly express at the time.

 

On your first point, the saga rarely shows what the average citizen is experiencing or feeling. Even during TPM, where you have a single planet that is being occupied by an invasion force, we do not see the actual suffering of the people (it is just lines of dialogue). ANH shows us a backwater outer rim world, then imperial and rebel bases. TESB mostly takes place on a rebel base and imperial/rebel ships. The people of Cloud City evacuate, but that's about it. Same goes for ROTJ. So not really sure what you're driving at.

Second, space is shown in the an entirely consistent way. OK, there is no asteroid field in this movie... Space is space. And space is by definition--cold, dark and largely empty...

Moving on...on your third point, having the heroes in conflict makes for an interesting story. If they always got a long and sang Kumbaya, then you lose some of the drama and suspense. The stakes are high during this chase, there are different strategies and approaches and so there is human conflict. I welcome that.

 

I just feel like they wanted to leave the story of government/politics out of this because the PT was so heavenly focused on that. Even though it was, and the execution made it not make sense at times, at least it turned out to be believable. We don't know how big the republic was or why the rebels are called the resistance, even though they aren't the same groups. Or if the FO is separate from the Empire or a continuation or any of that. We are pretty much left to reading the EU now for that. Unless they explain its origins in 9, and I can only see that if someone explains how the FO got to where it is now with Kylo from the beginning.

 

Well, we know the new republic did not have a military arm or at least had a minimal fleet that was wiped out with the explosion of Hosnian Prime in TFA. We know that Leia formed the military resistance to combat the increasing threat of the First Order encroachment on the galaxy. Those are fair inferences from the films. The Resistance is so named because of its aim in relation to the FO. We also know that the old Empire was wiped out and the FO is a new movement--that has emerged in a conquest to retake the galaxy by force.

 

I agree with the posts above which talk about the muddled nature of the First Order / Resistance and how it all fits together. The concept was quite clear in the OT, you had an Empire ruling the entire galaxy, and a small band of Rebels or Rebel Alliance hoping to bring it down. The Empire was shiny, and military-looking, with officers and stormtroopers and all kinds of might, and the Rebels were a desperate bunch of scruffy looking heroes, the underdogs.

The Force Awakens comes along and suddenly we have The First Order, who look aesthetically identical (with improvements) to the Empire. Except they don't control the Galaxy, the Republic does. Makes sense, a New Republic to fill the gap left behind by the toppled Empire. But despite now being in control of the Galaxy, this New Republic doesn't apparently have the military might to repel the First Order? I don't get it at all.

Why would the governing party have a "Resistance" ? Surely they would have access to an armed force of their own that would equate to or be greater than the First Order's?

I can't fathom for the life of me how big the First Order is meant to be, how they apparently control the entire Galaxy, why they look like the Empire but aren't the Empire. I suspect that the only reason for the aesthetic was simply to give audiences something very familiar looking. Stormtroopers are pretty iconic to Star Wars, so let's throw some stormtroopers in etc

I think the entire thing is a bit of a mess to be honest.

 

I always forget that the Republic was wiped out. Felt so anticlimactic. Yeah you feel bad for the people who got wiped out, but I feel more sympathy with Leia looking on as Alderann gets blown up. I feel like they should have shown more of what the Republic was in TFA, including any small fleet.

Oh trust me it’s a big mess in my mind trying to piece this puzzle. It really reminds me of the trade federation and taxation plot in Phantom how that made 0 sense whatsoever, but at least I could kind of go with the flow, and at least it was different!

I just don’t buy how small the republic is now or that the resistance is only what’s left. I get multiple planets were blown up, but if you think in terms of the empire being replaced by the new republic you would have a republic about the size the empire was all around the Galaxy. As far as FO, idk, I assume it was just empire remains and carried on, until Snoke came, or was he always there, until they got big again and bam. But this is where we should be seeing FO vs Republic not, FO chasing the tiny ships of resistance.

 

I think I just learned my personal reason while replying to another poster: http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...ussion-thread.50047246/page-102#post-54802544

Short version: Obfuscating the lines between "good" and "evil" isn't a healthy theme for the ongoing Star Wars Saga, IMHO.

 

One of the reasons these films don’t feel like Star Wars is because the Disney machine is playing it safe and always will be. Luke milking a weird sea creature and swigging it all over his beard is as close as we’re going to get to the edgier, less mainstream elements of the original six. Controversy with easily-offended film critics is the last thing they want, and as for audiences, it’s not so much about not offending them as it is not taking any logical steps that bring the story in a less market-research-gauranteed way. This means that certain plot and character elements play out in predictable ways, while others are subverted in nonsensical ways that just leave the viewer feeling empty.

 

There's no real gravitas to them. Kylo Ren is literally a Vader fan boy. There's no authenticity there.
Hux is a laughing stock, a cartoon Nazi. He's not a 3 dimensional character like an OT counterpart like Admiral Jerjerrod.
The Resistance has been all but obliterated but does anyone really care?
Rey is an InstantJedi (TM) who hasn't had to face any challenges. She comes out on top every time, no questions asked.